In an amazing report, it was disclosed that since the BP oil spill, only 3 out of 280 network news reports on the rising price of oil have even mentioned the White House actions to cut off drilling and other federal restrictions on the search for oil. Let's see, Obama takes an action that cuts domestic oil production by an estimated 600,000 or more barrels per day and the networks see no connection between that production cut and the rising price of oil. There is no way that this is unintentional. Even worse, the number of network stories discussing oil "speculators" has been substantial as has the stories about the high profits of big oil. Of course, so-called big oil do not actually produce most of their own oil anymore; that is the province of the various national oil companies like those in Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere. Companies like Exxon-Mobil are more refiners than producers. That means that the bulk of their revenue comes from selling the final product like gasoline and not from producing crude oil out of the ground. And, the speculators don't trade in the spot market where nearly all oil used for refining is bought. Speculators trade in futures so that they will never have to take delivery of the oil they buy and sell. Indeed, the spot market has a strong effect on the futures market -- much more so than the reverse.
The good news is that no matter what the media does, they cannot hide the truth from the American people. It does not take long to realize that something is very wrong when the price of gasoline more than doubles in the two years since Obama took office. Now, when Obama is saying that there is nothing that can solver the problem in the short run, it becomes even clearer that what Obama has done so far has just made things substantially worse. Indeed, if the price of oil keeps rising, it seems likely that no matter what Obama says or does, his chances for re-election will go down the drain.
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